


Stealing Home

by thecarlysutra



Series: Homecoming [3]
Category: Thunderheart (1992)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-04
Updated: 2010-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-13 12:46:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecarlysutra/pseuds/thecarlysutra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SUMMARY: You can go home again. No promises how comfortable it’ll be, though.<br/>AUTHOR’S NOTES: This is technically a sequel to Homecoming and Marrow, though they are not required reading.<br/>DEDICATION: For Doc Hollyday. If I can make her half as happy with these little stories as she makes me just by being herself and being my friend, well, that's called lucky.<br/>THANKS: Innumerable thanks go to Kita for her beta. She is truly fantastic at not letting me talk too much, or get away with anything.  For this reason, I am glad she is my friend and beta reader, and not my mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Crow Horse is in Charge of Travel Arrangements, and Ray Has a First Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [myhappyface](https://archiveofourown.org/users/myhappyface/gifts).



  
They were too late for lunch and too early for dinner, so the McDonald’s parking lot was nearly empty. Crow Horse went in; Ray walked Jimmy around a bit, and then sat with him in the sad little patch of grass, beneath the one balding tree.

“We got better lookin’ trees on the rez, huh, Jimmy?”

Jimmy squeezed his eyes shut as Ray scratched a Very Important Spot.

Crow Horse and a greasy paper bag emerged from the restaurant. He stared down at Ray and the dog from behind his Raybans.

“You need to call her,” he said.

Ray frowned. “I can’t be yelled at on an empty stomach.”

Crow Horse handed Ray the bag, and sat down beside him. Ray fed Jimmy a hamburger, and drank his Coke.

“You’re still gonna have an empty stomach,” Crow Horse said.

Ray wrinkled his nose. “I can’t eat any of this crap.”

They could have gone to a diner, somewhere Ray’s delicate culinary aesthetics would not have been offended, had Ray not been so hung up on leaving the damn dog in the car, but Crow Horse kept his comments to himself. He was two days tired of this argument.

“Call your ma,” he said instead.

Ray focused myopically on feeding Jimmy. “You know, there’s still time to change our minds and go to Disney.”

“You’re not on the phone in the next minute, I’m leaving you and Jimmy and driving back to the rez. Screw you _and_ Mickey Mouse.”

Crow Horse slapped a dime in Ray’s palm so he wouldn’t have that as an excuse, either.

Did they still make real phone booths? Ray stood in the shelter of the pay phone kiosk, listening to the hollow ring, and wished for one. He’d liked Superman as a kid, and God knew he could use all the help he could get right now.

Five rings. Was that enough to hang up? Six, seven. Ten, and then he could say no one was home.

“Hello?”

Ray started. The phone jumped from his hand, and for a moment, he forgot why he was calling.

“Uh, hi, Mom,” he said finally. “It’s me. Ray.”

Ray flinched. Stupid. He was an only child identifying himself to his mother. Brilliant.

“Oh, hi, sweetheart. How are you? How’s Walter?”

“I, uh, I’m fine. He’s fine. Everything’s fine. Look, Mom, we were thinking of maybe coming down to see you.”

“That would be wonderful. When do you think you would be here?”

Ray checked his watch. “Well, we’re about three hours away; traffic’s been okay—”

“I beg your pardon?”

Ray shot a guilty look at Crow Horse, who was standing by the car, and watching him, of course. Crow Horse looked at him over the top of his Raybans, no nonsense. Rock, hard place.

“We’re in Pittsburgh,” Ray said.

There was a long enough silence that Ray began to backpedal, to say that if it was an inconvenience, of course they wouldn’t come, there was plenty to do in the northeast.

“So you’ll be here for dinner,” Ray’s mother said with a finality that rivaled Crow Horse’s ordering him onto the phone. Ray looked at Crow Horse again. Rock, hard place.

***

 _Ray walked through the bare rooms of his house one last time. He could hear Crow Horse’s boots echo on the hardwood behind him, like an audio shadow._

 _Once he was satisfied he would not be leaving anything, Ray locked up the house and put the keys in the mailbox. There were no neighbors to say goodbye to; he had been there for five years, but that didn’t mean he knew anybody._

 _Crow Horse loaded the last of Ray’s boxes into the truck. Jimmy poked his head out the window, smiling. He liked going in the car._

 _“You really wanna drive sixteen hundred miles with that damn dog on your lap?” Crow Horse said._

 _“He’s not gonna sit on my lap, and yes, I want him to come with us.” Ray scratched Jimmy between the ears. “Look, I gotta make a stop before we leave. You don’t have to come.”_

 _“Get in the car,” Crow Horse said, and Ray did._

 _Crow Horse started up the engine. “You gotta see about a girl or somethin’?”_

 _“Something like that.”_

***

 _“I been here two months waiting for you to get your shit together, and you still haven’t told your mother you’re going?”_

 _“My dad and I aren’t on great terms right now,” Ray said. He shut the door, and stood in his parents’ driveway, looking in at Crow Horse through Jimmy’s window. “I said you didn’t have to come.”_

 _“Horse shit,” Crow Horse said, and followed him up the drive._

 _Ray’s mother was nearly as tall as he was. She didn’t dye her hair, and the gray mingled in just made the blonde look ashy, more muted and sophisticated. As far as Ray knew—which was not, he was thankful, very far—his mother’s figure hadn’t changed much since his childhood, but she had always dressed conservatively, so who knew. He did know she had stopped wearing dresses when he was in high school, switching to pantsuits. He had never seen her in jeans, and she only wore makeup on special occasions. She looked surprised when she opened the door._

 _“Raymond, honey, hi,” she said, her soft, unadorned hands resting briefly on his arm, the small of his back, as she motioned them in. “Your father isn’t here right now—”_

 _“Yeah, I know,” Ray said. “He’s at Fort Lee for the week; I know. That why I waited until now to come.”_

 _Ray’s mother’s lips thinned into a pale line._

 _“You have to understand,” she began._

 _“Oh, I understand,” Ray said. “Look, Mom, that’s not why I’m here.”_

 _Ray’s mother looked at him for a long moment. Then her pale eyes flickered briefly to Crow Horse, and she nodded._

 _“Okay,” she said._

 _“This is my friend, Walter.”_

 _Crow Horse extended his hand. “Ma’am.”_

 _Ray’s mother shook Crow Horse’s hand without hesitation, but she was looking at Ray._

 _“What’s this about?”_

 _“I took a transfer out west,” Ray said. “I’m going to be moving to South Dakota. I just . . . I just wanted you to know.”_

 _Ray’s mother’s eyes closed slowly, as if under the strain of some enormous weight. “I know you’re having trouble at work, Raymond, but if you’d just let him, your father can help you—”_

 _“I don’t want his help. And I’m not in trouble; this was my decision.”_

 _“When are you leaving?”_

 _Ray and Crow Horse exchanged a brief look. Ray’s mother threw up her hands._

 _“Now! You’re leaving now?”_

 _“I just came by to let you know,” Ray said._

 _Ray’s mother looked at him for a long moment, her mouth tense with the desire for speech._

 _“Your father left us,” she said finally. “And your stepfather has stayed, and he has done for us, and—”_

 _Ray shook his head. “Mom, I know. It’s not about that.”_

 _Crow Horse bowed his head. Ray’s mother looked at him, this strange man her son had brought into her home, who just stood there, silent and waiting. Slowly the tension left her face._

 _“Okay,” she said, and she gathered her son to her. She hugged Ray long and hard, taking him completely by surprise._

 _“Okay,” she said again. “You be good. And you call me if you need anything at all, you understand?”_

 _Ray did not understand, not really, but he nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”_

 _Ray’s mother hugged him again, and pressed a kiss to his forehead. Then she showed him to the door._

 _“You go on,” she said. “I’m going to have a word with Walter.”_

 _Ray’s lack of comprehension mounted; his mouth worked uselessly for a moment. His mother’s expression was firm. Ray looked to Crow Horse for help, instead. Crow Horse just shrugged._

 _“Okay,” Ray said, because it was the only answer, and he went to the car to wait with Jimmy._

 _Crow Horse stayed in the house an eternal five minutes. When he got in the truck, all he said was, “Ready?”_

 _They were miles down the road before Ray could summon the strength for speech._

 _“What did she say to you?” he said finally._

 _Crow Horse kept his eyes on the road. “None of your business.”_

 _“Walter. Please.”_

 _Crow Horse glanced over at him. He tapped his hands against the wheel._

 _“She told me to look after you.”_

***

They did arrive in time for dinner, the sun growing heavy on the horizon, the house filled with the smells of cooking.

Ray’s mother hugged them both, and then hurried back to the kitchen. Ray got Jimmy some water, then washed his hands and helped his mother with supper.

“Walter,” she said, “I expect this kind of last minute warning from my son, but I thought better of you.”

Crow Horse glared at Ray, whose attentions immediately became completely involved in slicing uniform potato cubes.

“It’s not for lack of trying,” Crow Horse said.

She nodded. “He can be stubborn.”

Ray frowned. “I didn’t drive for two days just to be made fun of. I can get that at home.”

Ray’s mother hugged him again. “It’s nice to see you, sweetheart.”

A timer dinged, and she took a pot of vegetables off the heat.

“Your father’s at Fort Lee until Thursday,” she said. “Or did you already know that?”

She looked at Ray like she could see his answer manifested as subtitles floating just below his face. He squirmed.

“I did hear that somewhere, yes, ma’am.”

“Are you two going to fight forever?”

Ray lowered his eyes to the potatoes again, but they weren’t as good an excuse, this time, as he had finished dicing them already.

“I’m not ashamed of him,” he said.

Crow Horse’s hand on his shoulder. Ray’s mother sighed.

“I want you to stay until he gets back,” she said. “I know you’re grown, and you can do what you want, but I think you should stay and talk with him. He loves you.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ray said. “He just doesn’t like me.”

***

Removed from the body of the house and insulated by silence, Ray’s childhood bedroom felt like another universe, a place out of step with time. It wasn’t that the décor was dated—it was, but subtly—but the mindset Ray needed to feel comfortable there was many years past. It was like being at the Knee; he saw one thing, but his body had its own understanding, its own memory. He felt cagey, earnest, conspicuous. Jimmy and Walter—physical embodiments of his new life—waited for him on the bed, but Ray found himself unable to stay in the present, distracted by his mother’s presence down the hall, by whether there were still Playboy’s beneath the mattress.

“You planning on sleeping standing up?” Crow Horse asked. “Might be hard on your shoulder—not that I don’t wanna see you try.”

Ray snapped out of his adolescent-vision stupor. He had not actually finished undressing; he began to remove his t-shirt, then stopped. He left it on, and sat on the bed, atop the covers. He set his hands in his lap. No. Crossed his arms over his chest. No. Laid his palms flat on the bedspread. No.

Crow Horse, in his shorts, the covers pulled back, was looking at him.

“Ray,” he said.

Ray found a loose thread at the corner of the sheet. He tugged, and for a moment, he felt better. He watched the thread inch out.

“In tenth grade, my parents went out of town, and I had my girlfriend over. Cindy Jensen. We made love right here, in my bed.”

“Okay,” Crow Horse said. Patient, wary.

The hem of the sheet began to unravel, and Ray left it alone. His hands ached with idleness.

“She didn’t sleep over,” Ray said. “I’ve—I’ve never had—I’ve never slept with anyone here.”

Ray’s eyes were on the thread—useless to him now; why couldn’t he just give it up?—until Crow Horse forced his gaze up, squeezing Ray’s good shoulder gently.

“Okay,” Crow Horse said.

He brought his hand up, slowly, to fit the joint of Ray’s jaw in the palm of his hand. Steady slow movements, like approaching an unfamiliar dog.

“It’s okay,” he said.

Ray relaxed into Crow Horse’s touch. He let Crow Horse take him into an embrace, let Crow Horse pull him down to the bed. Ray settled along Walter’s familiar length. He tried to relax, but could not banish from his mind the nagging question of whether the door was locked.

His shoulder’s tensed enough that it twinged the place where he’d been shot—not yet healed. Crow Horse’s arms were folded around him; Ray tried to focus on that, on Walter’s pulse beating against his chest, the familiar warmth and feel and taste of him. But his thoughts kept drifting away, an errant balloon.

Ray kissed Walter, hard, pressing Walter’s broad shoulders into the pillows. Ray closed his eyes and wished for the alchemy to bring this moment into step with the odd, dated world he could not seem to shake off.

***

 _There was nothing so terrifying as a wildfire. A great wall of fire burning through the countryside, a ravenous god devouring everything in its path. The smell of smoke for miles, your lungs and eyes burning._

 _Ray had spent his life in the northeast, where it was too cool and lush to worry about such things. The fires he was used to were manmade: campfires and bonfires and people burning leaves in metal barrels in their front yards. They were manmade; they were controlled._

 _Ray had been unprepared for wildfires. They just_ started _, like a curse, and then they ran until they were through, and that was it. Ray had been unprepared for wildfires, and he had been unprepared for the sheer terror a moving wall of fire would engender within him, a deep, animal fear he could not excise._

 _The sky smoldered like an ember, the atmosphere hazy with smoke, the horizon burning orange. In the hills, the land was on fire._

 _Ray had parked his cruiser horizontally across the rez roads leading to the mountains, a roadblock. The fire suppression boys said he’d be more than safe from this distance, but Ray’s lungs were scratchy with smoke and he could see the fire blazing in the hills, and he wanted to run._

 _“It’s just a part of nature,” Crow Horse would say anytime the fires got Ray nervy like this—after he had finished making fun of his fear, of course._

 _Ray breathed in the clean, linen scent of his handkerchief, and forced his eyes from the flames. He had work to do._

 _Ray turned back to the road stretching on toward the rez, and frowned. A thin figure, walking down the dusty highway. Ray frowned, squinted. The air was thick with smoke, and it was hard to see. Of course, the low oxygen, that could make your eyes play tricks on you, too._

 _The figure neared. A small, dark boy, one brown eye, one blue. He was barefoot, and his face and hands were smudged with char. Ray came out to meet him._

 _“Hey,” he called. “Are you okay? Where are your parents?”_

 _The boy fell just as Ray reached him. Ray had good hands and fast reflexes, and he caught the child before he hit the ground. It was like holding a bundle of sticks; the boy weighed hardly anything, and he didn’t move. Ray could hear the rattle of labored breath in his chest._

 _Ray looked up, looked anywhere, for help. But there was only the long desert road before them, and behind them, the insatiable fire._

Ray thought he woke quietly. Walter’s back was to him, his only movement the tide of long breaths. Ray concentrated on slowing his own breathing. He wiped the sweat from his brow and wished for peaceful sleep.

“You okay?”

Walter’s sleep-creased voice, the moment Ray closed his eyes. They flew open, in time to see Walter turn to face him.

“Bad dream,” Ray said. Crow Horse’s face registered shock and resignation, and Ray added, “Just a dream.”

Crow Horse nodded slowly. “Good. Could do without newsflashes in your head for a while.”

“You’re telling me,” Ray said.

Crow Horse was settling back to sleep, one arm draped across Ray’s middle. Ray knew he should leave things alone, but he felt the desire to expel these words like a burning brand.

“I know you want kids,” he said. “And I know that—I know that I joke and drag my feet, but the assumption’s always been that someday, we’d work on it. What if . . . what if I said I didn’t think I could? If I didn’t think I could, ever?”

Walter sat up on his elbows, regarded Ray with a long prairie hunter’s stare: the kind that could withstand sandstorms and undiluted desert sun for hours without blinking.

“Well,” he said, “I’m not stupid, Ray. I knew going in that being with you was gonna make kids harder. And you don’t go into a partnership with a list of things you want from the other person; that’ll kill it every time. And the last thing I want is to force something from you that you ain’t lookin’ to give.”

Walter looked at Ray for a long time, his mouth turning down. “I think, though, if you got something to say, you had better just say it, and not be trying to sidle by me with this hypothetical bullshit.”

Panic rushed Ray so fast he thought he would be sick.

“No,” he said quickly. “That isn’t—I didn’t mean to—it’s not an ultimatum, or . . . I just had a bad dream, Walter, that’s all. I’m just shook up. I’m sorry; just forget it.”

The hard look on Walter’s face didn’t ease any, so Ray said it again. “I’m sorry.”

Finally, the tension on Walter’s face broke. He lay back down to sleep, one arm slung around Ray’s waist. Ray could feel the curl of Walter’s fingers resting against his spine.

“Get some sleep, _kola_ ,” Walter said. “You decide you wanna talk, we’ll talk in the morning, okay?”

Ray was too shaken to speak, but a nod was enough. Walter closed his eyes, and when Ray scooted closer, Walter’s arm around him tightened, the pads of his fingers pressing gently into Ray’s back.

***

Crow Horse woke to Ray still sleeping. He lazed about in bed awhile, hoping Ray might wake up, and they could talk or maybe fool around a little—there was no telling why, but Ray seemed to do his best mouth work in the mornings—but after half an hour he got bored, and got up. Crow Horse was showered and shaved and dressed for the day, and Ray was still sleeping. Probably he needed the rest, so Crow Horse left him alone and went downstairs.

Ray’s mother had asked Crow Horse, the first time they’d met, to call her Maureen. She was nice and all, and she seemed to like Crow Horse okay, but it was still hard for him to be so familiar. He thought of her as Ray’s ma, or as Mrs. Levoi, even though that wasn’t her name anymore; she’d changed it way back when she’d married Ray’s stepfather, some twenty odd years ago. Not that Crow Horse had known her then. It had been a long time, was the point.

Maureen—Ray’s ma—was sitting at the table with the paper and a cup of coffee when Crow Horse reached the kitchen.

“Morning,” he said. “Ray’s still sleeping; he’s had a bit of a rough run, hasn’t been sleeping well, so I left him.”

“That’s okay, Walter. Help yourself to some breakfast.”

There were eggs—and they looked like the whole egg, not like Ray made them, with the best part thrown out—and toast, and sausage. Walter did help himself, and then he came to sit down at the table with Ray’s ma. For a while, the damn dog—baited by the smell of breakfast, the clever little beggar—danced around Crow Horse’s feet hoping for a bite, but then Crow Horse hit him with a _git or else_ look, and he took off.

“Mrs. Levoi—”

Ray’s ma set her paper down, shifting her eyes to Crow Horse. She smiled.

“Maureen,” she said.

“Right, sorry. Look, there’s somethin’ I gotta talk to you about.”

“Yes, of course. Is Ray okay? You said he’s had a rough run, and you two just showed up—”

“Yeah. Look, we had a hard case, and it shook him up pretty bad. And—he’s fine, really; don’t worry—but he got shot, on the job.” Maureen’s mouth parted, a pink ‘o’ of worry, but Crow Horse kept on. “He’s okay, doctor says he’s healing up fine, but it’s riled him.”

“He’s okay,” Maureen said. It was barely noticeable, but Crow Horse knew how to read people, and he heard the shake in her voice. “You’re sure he’s okay.”

“Yeah. Doc says he’ll be fine. But he’s shook up pretty bad, and I took him off the rez to give him a little distance to get back to himself. But I know things are bad with him and your husband, and if that’s gonna be a problem when he gets home, I’m gonna take Ray and we’re gonna leave before that happens.”

Maureen’s eyes flickered down to the coffee cup warming her hands.

“He has no idea you’re talking to me about this, does he?” she asked.

“Nope. Sometimes you gotta do things for his own good.”

She nodded.

“I’ll talk to my husband,” she said.

***

They had a lazy, easy day, and Ray seemed to be loosening up. Crow Horse was hoping that was a trend that would continue, and as Ray was undressing for the night, Crow Horse pulled him down to the bed and helped him finish the job.

Ray tensed like a startled deer and pulled away.

“I can’t,” he said.

Crow Horse studied Ray’s face, studied those pale eyes working the room. The eyes of a teenage kid you stopped for a busted taillight who was worried you’d find the pot in the glove compartment. _Wasi’chu_ people were so damn uptight about sex. Yeah, Ray was Indian, but he’d been raised _Wasi’chu_ , and in some things it amounted to about the same.

“I’ll lock the door,” Crow Horse offered.

Ray shook his head. Crow Horse got up, anyway, since half the time Ray didn’t know what he needed so you just had to go ahead and do it and get thanked later. But maybe this time wasn’t one of those times. Ray grabbed him by the arm, held him fast. Ray looked up at Crow Horse with those spooked deer eyes.

“I can’t,” he said again. “I—I can’t be quiet.”

Crow Horse knew he shouldn’t, since Ray was serious, but he couldn’t stop himself. He laughed. Crow Horse laughed, and he crawled back onto the bed, and he pulled Ray toward him, and kissed him.

“That’s what you’re worried about?”

Ray tensed like a rabbit in a snare. “I’m serious, I can’t. Walter, please.”

Crow Horse studied Ray’s face. He looked wild and desperate, bare. Crow Horse stopped pawing at him, and he held him loosely, giving Ray some air. Crow Horse kissed him again, but this time with a closed mouth, real soft.

“Okay,” he said.

Ray looked anguished, and his legs were shaking pretty bad.

“I’m sorry,” he said, but Crow Horse already knew, because he sure looked it.

“I said it was okay,” Crow Horse said.

Ray didn’t look any better, so he added, “I don’t just keep you around for the sex, you know.”

Ray was so surprised he laughed, and let Crow Horse kiss him again.  



	2. In Which Ray is Afforded Luxuries, and Crow Horse Gains a New Appreciation for Baseball

  
Ray was already awake when Crow Horse woke up, on his back and staring at the ceiling. Crow Horse checked the clock.

“You’re up early,” he said.

“It’s Thursday,” Ray said.

“Yeah,” Crow Horse said slowly. “And tomorrow it’ll be Friday.”

Ray glanced over at Crow Horse. He didn’t look spooked anymore; he looked passive, resigned.

“My father’s coming home today.”

***

After breakfast, Ray’s legs were still shaking, so Crow Horse took him and Jimmy on a walk.

“It’s pretty country,” Crow Horse said.

Ray removed himself from his thoughts to take in the scene around them. Before them, Jimmy rollicked from tree to tree, sure that he and his three legs could catch the squirrels with their teasing chattering and seductively waving boa tails. The quiet streets were lined by white picket fences and rows of elks. The grand trees loomed over them with their lush canopy of leaves, making the street below them cooler than the summer day beyond, making them feel like they were walking through some enchanted forest rather than the suburbs.

“Yeah,” Ray said. “You should see it in the fall, when the leaves change colors.”

“That an invitation?”

Ray didn’t know how to answer. He wasn’t sure he wouldn’t be thrown out of the house in a few hours; there was no telling where he’d be in a few months. But then he looked at Crow Horse, his mouth quirked slightly at the corner, and realized that he had the luxury of not having to answer.

Jimmy hopped on his one hind leg, clawing at the rough bark of an oak with his front paws. He barked at a squirrel high up in the branches; a short, gleeful yip, not a threat.

Crow Horse and Ray walked on in shared silence.

***

Ten yards from the house, Ray froze. There was a new car in the driveway, a dark sedan.

“That your stepdad’s car?” Crow Horse asked.

“Unless my mother’s being audited by the IRS,” Ray said. Crow Horse just looked at him, so he added, “That’s a government-issue vehicle. Like a company car. It’s not what he was driving last time I was here, but they upgrade them pretty often.”

“It’s been three years,” Crow Horse said.

“Yeah,” Ray said.

His pale eyes were fixed on the car, and he didn’t move a muscle.

“You wanna just light outta here?” Crow Horse said.

“I’m not afraid,” Ray said. “And if I was, I’m not a coward.”

“Plus, our stuff’s inside,” Crow Horse added.

“Yeah,” Ray said. “And I hate shopping.”

Ray unstuck himself, and headed for the door.

Ray could tell, by the way they were standing, by the expressions on their faces, that he had interrupted his parents in a heated argument. He froze in the foyer, the door hanging open behind him.

The moment she saw him, Ray’s mother forced the raw look from her face.

“Honey,” she said.

“I can go,” he said.

Ray could hear Walter’s boots on the tile, could feel him crowding the entranceway behind him. But Ray could not move, nor take his eyes from his mother.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. She stepped toward her son, shepherded him out of the doorway. “Boys, you’re letting the cool air out. Come on.”

Ray’s mother shooed the boys out of the entryway, and shut the door behind them. Ray listened to the lock click into place with a sinking feeling of finality.

Ray’s stepfather had the perfect posture and habitual neatness of a career army man. He was striking in bearing and appearance; he had a full head of slate-colored hair and an unwavering gaze.

“Sir,” Ray said.

The Colonel’s gray eyes ran over him clinically. His vision was still sharp, and his gaze was quick, analytical.

Crow Horse nudged Ray in the back. The actual motion went unnoticed, but it made Ray jump a little.

“Um, this is Walter Crow Horse,” he said. “Walter, my father, Colonel Harold Cleary.”

Crow Horse stepped forward, extended his hand. Ray’s stepfather looked at it for a long moment, as if trying to decipher its function, before shaking it.

“Nice to meet you, sir.”

Ray’s stepfather looked at him, unspeaking, for a long moment, and then turned his attention back to Ray. He just looked, unspeaking, jaw square and set.

Ray’s mother set her hands gently on Crow Horse’s shoulders.

“Walter, come help me in the kitchen.”

“I—”

“Right now.”

“Oh, yeah, okay. Yes, ma’am.”

Ray could not turn away to watch them go, but he felt their absence like the loss of a limb.

The Colonel looked at him. Ray set his jaw, and steeled himself. He took a long breath, feeling the air fill his lungs and then slowly escape.

“Sir,” he said again.

“I heard you took fire,” the Colonel said.

Ray was surprised. He started to ask his stepfather where he’d gotten that information, but then realized he had a pretty good idea.

“No real damage, sir,” he said instead.

The Colonel nodded. “Where?”

Ray showed him, ghosting his hand over his left shoulder. His stepfather stepped toward him. Without preamble, he took Ray’s arm, manipulated the joint.

“Healing all right?” he asked. “Seems to move okay.”

“Yes, sir,” Ray said, the force of his voice stolen by surprise.

Ray’s stepfather let go of him, stepped away. Feet between them again. Ray had been all right at first, shaken but still basically okay. But after that, he felt childish, small. Being summoned to his stepfather’s study, standing before his desk, waiting for judgment.

Ray flinched, massaged the bridge of his nose like he could work the memories free.

“You should have let me know,” Ray’s stepfather said.

 _You’ll take my calls as long as there’s a chance I’ve been mortally wounded?_ Ray thought.

Instead, he said, “It really wasn’t anything, sir.” And then, because he could not help himself, “I didn’t think you wanted to hear from me.”

The Colonel looked at him for a long time. Ray felt, as he always did when bearing this kind of scrutiny from the man, a compulsion to stand at attention.

“I’m disappointed in you, Raymond,” he said. “But I’m still your father.”

Except he wasn’t. His father was a dead man, a half-breed who called him _wasi_ and taught him the wrong definitions to words. Except he wasn’t. His father was a man who believed in rules, and consequences, who had told him the last time they spoke that there was a way things were done, that there was an order of command to be followed, and that what he had done to Frank Coutelle was _never_ done. Except he wasn’t. His father drank himself to death, and because he’d had no family, and because he chose the bottle over the family he’d made, and burnt through Ray’s mother’s love and patience, once he was gone that was it: his father was gone. Except he wasn’t. His father had told him, three years ago before he had stopped taking Ray’s calls, that he had caused him the embarrassment of his life and that if he wanted to be welcome in his home again, he had better fix it. And that was before Ray was gay. After that had come out, Ray had had to call nearly a dozen times and receive increasingly flimsy excuses from his father’s secretary before he got the hint.

Ray swallowed, dryly. It was a very hard thing when your own morality and that of your parents’ disagreed. Harder still to have the strength to follow your sword, but not the strength to stop wanting approval.

“They offered me that promotion,” Ray said. “Assistant chief at Richmond.”

“I know that. Bill Dawes called me after you turned him down.”

“It was hush money.”

Ray’s stepfather’s lip curled. “Is that what this is about? Penance? You think moving to the middle of nowhere, killing your career, that’s going to make you a good man?”

“I’m helping people.”

“Yes, you’re performing a public service, writing parking tickets and double checking the native PD’s spelling. Don’t be naïve, Raymond.”

“Did you know? Did you know why they were sending me to Coutelle’s block?”

“No.”

“They called you, didn’t they? About me.”

“They did. They asked me if you could be trusted.”

“If I could be manipulated, you mean.”

The words escaped before Ray could lasso them back. The Colonel gave him a hard look.

“I didn’t know what they had going on up there, just that they were having trouble. They asked me if you could be trusted, and I said yes. I certainly didn’t think . . .”

The Colonel trailed off, shook his head.

Ray felt the anger crawling up and tried hard to keep his calm, even as he felt his jaw clench, his muscles tense.

“They used me. Why doesn’t that upset you?”

“They chose you for the assignment because you were uniquely qualified. Your skills—”

“Had nothing to do with it. They picked me because I have Sioux blood.”

“And it’s about time that did something for you. It was a break. Like that affirmative action bullshit, but without you having to cry about it. I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings, but there’s no shame in it; they picked you. It doesn’t matter why. Take the advantage, and grow up.”

Ray was afraid if he opened his mouth, something vile would pop out of it, so he said nothing.

“They’ll let you back in,” his stepfather continued. “A real job, none of this liaison bullshit. And if they’re hesitant because of this queer garbage, I can make some calls.”

Ray was able to control his speech, but he held the reins too tightly, and his voice came out hollow and dead.

“No thank you, sir.”

His stepfather shook his head. “You made a mistake. Stop being so goddamn stubborn, and I can help you fix it.”

“No thank you, sir.”

Ray held the man’s gaze. He waited to be told he wasn’t welcome here, to leave and never come back.

After an eternity, Ray’s stepfather sighed.

“You’ve made your bed,” he said. “I sure as hell hope you enjoy lying in it.” He turned, began walking down the hall. As an afterthought: “Go help your mother with dinner. Make yourself useful.”

***

Ray was concentrating on cutting up his chicken like a surgeon hoping the damn thing would fly away when he was done. He never was a big talker, but he’d only said maybe three words since dinner started.

“What line of work are you in, Walter?” Ray’s stepdad asked.

“Law enforcement. Me and Ray work together at the tribal PD.”

“I imagine you don’t see a lot of action, given the scope of the Major Crimes Act.”

“Well, used to we got pushed off most things by the feds, but since we got a fed liaison on the payroll, we don’t see much of them.”

Ray’s stepdad’s hands stilled over his plate, knife and fork frozen mid-action. He had been looking at Crow Horse in a cursory way while addressing him directly, but that all stopped now. His gaze was firmly on Ray.

“Is that right,” he said, not a question.

“It’s my block,” Ray said, “and the agents at Rapid City are happy to let me have it. If we could get a forensics lab on the reservation, they could wash their hands of us completely. It’d be like Christmas for them.”

“Where do you propose we find the money for that?” Ray’s stepfather asked. “The reservation doesn’t pay enough in taxes to warrant that kind of expenditure.”

“The crime rate’s higher than anywhere else in the state, Rapid City included.”

“It still isn’t justified, spending that kind of money on such a small percentage of the population.”

“I was not arguing that point, sir,” Ray said, and focused his attention on his dinner again.

“Ray’s been a big help, is what I was trying to say,” Crow Horse said.

“I don’t doubt that,” Ray’s stepdad said. “You’ve got a Quantico-trained agent with a world-class education working for a bargain basement price. I imagine that’s very helpful.”

“I really like the sauce on this, Mom,” Ray said. “Coriander?”

“Nah, it’s like cilantro,” Crow Horse said.

“Coriander is cilantro.”

“No kidding?”

“It’s tumeric,” Ray’s ma said.

“Are you an activist, Walter?” Ray’s stepdad asked.

“The Aboriginal Rights Movement? Well—”

“That isn’t the kind of activism I am referring to. I mean this Stonewall, so-called ‘pride’ rabble-rousing.”

“Uh, no, sir. I’m not what you’d call a professional homosexual.”

Ray set his silverware down. His hands sat tensed above them.

“I was not recruited, sir,” Ray said. “This isn’t some sort of subversive act; I like him, and he makes me happy, and we just—we work together. It works. It isn’t political.”

Ray’s stepdad’s steel gray eyes bore down on Ray like the barrel of a gun.

“That may be the most naïve statement to ever leave your mouth,” he said.

Ray closed his eyes, like wincing from a blow. “Yes, sir.”

***

Crow Horse was getting ready for sleep. Ray was just sitting, as he had been for the past ten minutes, on the edge of the bed, staring into space. Jimmy was taking advantage of the situation; he had insinuated himself between Ray’s legs and was being petted as an automatic function of Ray’s distracted mind.

Crow Horse rinsed his mouth and then turned off the water. He stood isolated by the weird hollow silence of the bathroom, like a little cave in your house.

“That wasn’t too bad,” he said.

“Yeah,” Ray said sourly, “it went great.”

Crow Horse frowned. He came out of the bathroom and nailed Ray with his _don’t think that just because you’re cute, I’ll take your shit_ look.

“Coulda been worse, chief.”

“Yeah.” Ray hesitated, his mouth working uselessly. Then he brought his eyes up to look Crow Horse in the face. “I kinda thought, going in, that he’d throw me out.”

“Yeah,” Crow Horse said softly. “It went better than that, though. Better than expected. And maybe it’ll grow on him; my parents were unhappy at first, but now they love you.”

“Your parents were kind of cool when we told them—”

Crow Horse laughed. “Yeah, you only think that cuz we had three-fourths of the conversation in Lakota, back when you only knew about two words.”

Ray frowned. If he tried hard, he could vaguely remember that, but his memory had remodeled itself, so it took Crow Horse’s saying something to bring it up.

“They were mad?” he said.

“Oh yeah. Killing the family line, and with a white guy!”

Ray’s expression softened. “You never told me that. You should have told me.”

Crow Horse shrugged. “I figured you had enough on your mind, becoming gay and Indian within a few months.”

Ray gritted his teeth. “But that’s why I’m—you should have told me.”

“Okay, _kola_. Next time. Tell me how your talk with your stepdad went. The one earlier, with just you two, I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” Ray said. “It was, you know, bad.”

“Yeah,” Crow Horse said.

“But not as bad as I thought.” A pause. “Did you tell my father I got shot?”

Crow Horse looked surprised.

“You mean the guy I just met for the first time a couple hours ago?” he said. “No.”

Then, mouth twisting in an expression near apology: “I told your ma.”

Ray sighed. “Great.”

“I thought it was good for them to know.”

“That would explain why he’s talking to me again.”

“So he’s talkin’ to you. That’s a good thing, enit? I thought that was what you wanted.”

“Yeah, but—”

Crow Horse shook his head. “You make things too complicated, Ray.”

***

Crow Horse could tell Ray felt better with his stepdad out of the house. The old man left for work before they got up, and Ray, like he could sense the absence, was relaxed even upon waking.

Ray’s ma had pictures put up all through the house. The walls, coffee and end tables, the mantle. Crow Horse poked around them, ignoring Ray’s mounting agitation, until Ray’s ma brought out some photo albums.

“This is really unnecessary,” Ray said.

“This is really fantastic,” Crow Horse said.

Crow Horse and Ray’s ma sat on the couch, the albums spread open on their laps. Ray, sighing, joined them, but he sat stakeout pensive, and Crow Horse could tell he was just there for damage control.

Page after page of blonde boys with haunted, clear blue eyes. Little Ray in Halloween costumes, posed before Santa, standing at attention in little league rosters.

“How come you’re not smilin’ in any of these, chief?” Crow Horse asked.

Ray shrugged. He was not, Crow Horse noted, smiling now. That was a hard thing to get out of him; that was another raised _Wasi’chu_ thing. White people needed an excuse to be happy; they didn’t know how to make it themselves. Maybe it came from not having enough hardship; when all you had was lemons, you got used to the idea that no one was coming with lemonade any time soon. You had to roll up your sleeves and squeeze those sumbitches yourself.

Crow Horse stopped on the sixth page of team pictures. Little Ray was starting to look more like his Ray. Funny, Crow Horse had never before appreciated baseball uniforms in quite this way.

“What were you? Shortstop?”

“Second base.”

Crow Horse nodded. “Yeah. You got those good hands. How long’d you play?”

“Up until my junior year of college.”

“Then what happened? You discover women?”

“He hurt his knee,” Ray’s ma said. She squeezed her son’s knee, and smiled sadly.

“It healed fine,” Ray said. “But I missed a whole season, and it gave me the opportunity to, you know, study.”

“He changed his major to criminal justice,” Ray’s ma said, “and then joined the FBI right out of college.”

Crow Horse squinted at Ray. “And what was your major before your epiphany?”

Ray was a moment in answering, so Crow Horse pressed. “Was it something embarrassing? Dance?”

Ray gave Crow Horse his _bitch, please, FBI don’t play that_ look.

“It was kinesiology,” he said.

It took Crow Horse a moment to understand.

“You thought you were gonna be a pro ballplayer,” he said.

“I wanted to be, yeah,” Ray said. “Then I grew up, and I got a grownup job. I was lucky that I loved it as much, and was better at it, than the thing I loved as a kid.”

“You still got one of those uniforms?”

Ray frowned at him.

“Here you go, Walter,” Ray’s ma said, setting an open album down in his lap. “Here’s one of Ray smiling.”

The photograph was faded by age, but Ray was indeed smiling. He was being held aloft by a thin, dark man, and grinning at the camera.

Ray’s ma studied the date written below the picture. “He must have been four when this was taken.”

“That your dad?” Crow Horse asked.

Ray looked at the picture. He did not remember that moment, but he remembered the sensation of being held, of running into his father’s arms and being carried to the sky.  



	3. In Which Crow Horse’s Feelings are Hurt, and Ray is a Shapeshifter

  
Crow Horse and Ray volunteered to go grocery shopping for Ray’s ma. It was the least they could do, and it was good to get out of the house. Besides, Ray’s stepdad would be home soon, and Crow Horse could tell Ray was getting antsy just thinking about it.

Crow Horse manned the cart, and Ray handled the list. They wandered slowly through the aisles upon aisles of _Wasi’chu_ shoppers pondering dozens of varieties of soaps and cheeses, so unlike the general store on the rez, where you got what they had and were thankful for it.

“How come you never told me anything about that baseball stuff?” Crow Horse asked. “Seems like it used to be a pretty big deal to you.”

Ray shrugged, attention absorbed in choosing a salad dressing.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t really think about that stuff when I’m with you.”

Ray finally made his decision and was ready to move on, but Crow Horse parked the cart across the aisle, blocking his way.

“What’s that mean?”

“It’s not a bad thing,” Ray said. “I just feel—I kind of feel like I’m not that person anymore; that isn’t my life. I have a new life, and it just feels . . . separate. I mean, you’re not the same now as you were at eighteen, right?”

“Course not. But maybe since I been tied to the same place, the same people, my whole life, I’m not separate. But you don’t have that.”

“No.”

“So this is hard for you, enit, bein’ at your folks’ place? Having to be both Rays?”

“Yes,” Ray said softly.

Crow Horse nodded, and he moved the cart to let Ray through.

“Okay,” he said.

“Don’t be mad,” Ray said.

“I’m not.”

“Really, I get it if you are, but—”

“I’m not mad at you, _kola_. Do you _want_ me to be mad at you?”

“No. I want—”

“You want to fit back into your stepdad’s life. I know that, Ray.”

“And—”

“And family makes you crazy, and sometimes to keep the peace you have to act contrary to yourself. I know that. I got family, too, remember?”

“You’re my family,” Ray said. Then the words were too big, and he looked away.

***

Ray’s stepdad’s fancy government-issue car was in the driveway when they got back. Crow Horse and Ray, arms laden with brown paper bags, entered to find the house in disarray.

“Oh, sweetie,” Ray’s mother said, her head at stiff angles as she slipped in her earrings, “I forgot; your father’s having a business dinner here tonight.”

Ray’s stepdad, the vestments of a suit hung loose around him, unbuttoned and untied, came into the hallway.

“If you had given us more notice, I could have rescheduled,” he said. “Given the time constraints, it isn’t possible.”

“Yes, sir,” Ray said.

“I trust you have your orders.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ray’s stepdad nodded, and disappeared back down the hall.

Ray asked his ma if they had time to put the groceries away.

“We’re expecting them at seven. Thank you, sweetie.”

Crow Horse and Ray put the groceries away. Crow Horse frowned down at his own jeans and boots.

“I ain’t got clothes for a business dinner, Ray.”

Ray rolled his tongue around the inside of his mouth like he did when what he really wanted to say was rude or inappropriate, like he expected to physically reshape the words into something more proper.

“Yeah,” he said finally, “he wants us to leave.”

“Eyah?” Crow Horse said. “That’s not what he said.”

“That was military speak for ‘get the hell out,’” Ray said.

“Well,” Crow Horse said.

Ray’s cheeks hollowed out, and he was having trouble meeting Crow Horse’s gaze. Crow Horse hitched up his britches.

“Well,” he said. “Guess we’ll have to go out on our own, then.”

***

“This is ridiculous,” Ray said. His legs shook like they intended to run off without the rest of him.

“You never been to a titty bar before, Ray?”

Ray drummed his fingers on the table. He watched Crow Horse watching the dancers.

“One time,” he said finally. “In college. It was a bachelor party.”

Crow Horse glanced at him. “You make it sound like a forced death march. I thought you liked girls before you met me.”

Ray’s mouth twisted. He started to say yes, he’d liked girls—he _still_ liked girls, it was just that he was with Crow Horse now—but that overt displays had never done much but make him uncomfortable, that his immediate instinct was to get them into some clothes and maybe some kind of work program. But he knew Crow Horse would make fun of him, so he kept his mouth shut.

The waitress, who was wearing half a skirt, but, thankfully, a top, sashayed to their table.

“What can I get you boys?”

Ray looked at the table, and ordered a Coke.

“Two drink minimum, sweetheart.”

Ray tried ordering two Cokes, but apparently the problem was in his choice of beverage.

“I’ll have four beers,” Crow Horse said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ray said as the waitress wiggled away.

“I’m on vacation,” Crow Horse said, and that was the end of that.

***

Crow Horse was on beer two.

“So which one’s your type?” he asked.

“Which one what?” Ray asked. He had mostly been watching the table, and Crow Horse drinking.

Crow Horse hit him with an unpitying look, the same one he gave speeders who claimed they had no idea they were going seventy in a fifty-five, officer, and couldn’t they just let this one go?

“The girls, Ray. Which one do you like? Your ma told me you had a type.”

Ray frowned, but did not to ask why Crow Horse had been talking to his mother about that kind of thing; Crow Horse wouldn’t tell him, and would probably laugh at him, moreover. He did force his eyes up, though, to look at the girls dancing.

“Her,” he said finally.

Crow Horse squinted. “You’re gonna have to be more specific, chief.”

Ray squirmed. “The blonde, I guess. In the pink.”

Crow Horse crossed his arms over his chest, took a long hard look. The girl in question was small, blonde, and pretty in an unexciting, girl next-door kind of way. She would have looked more at home in pearls and a sweater set than she did in a pink Lycra microskirt and sequined bra. She was unsteady on her stilt-high stilettos.

“I think my feelings are hurt, Ray.”

***

Crow Horse was halfway through beer four when he decided to flag down the blonde in the pink.

“What are you doing?” Ray demanded. “Please, stop it. I will do anything you want if you just stop it right now.”

Crow Horse ignored him; he had finally succeeded in attracting the girl with a wave of a few folded twenty-dollar bills.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” she said.

She was cute up close, too. Ray blushed a little, wishing simultaneously for a hole to open up in the earth below him. Or below Crow Horse; any avenue that ended this would have been fine.

Crow Horse grinned at the girl, and motioned to Ray with his twenties.

“Good evening to you,” he said. “My friend could use some cheering up, and I believe you are in that business.”

Ray was sure that his expression was one of abject horror, but he could not fix it.

“What are you doing?” he said again.

Crow Horse steadfastly ignored him.

“We’re on vacation,” he told the stripper.

Ray’s jaw hung slack, as though it had been broken. The girl took Crow Horse’s money, and with the toe of her heavy heel turned Ray’s chair so it was no longer facing the table. Ray was surprised she was able to move him; she was stronger than she looked.

“Just relax, sweetie,” she said.

“Relax,” Crow Horse echoed.

If Ray thought he couldn’t relax before, he was completely doomed once the girl started dancing. Of course, that was a very loose term for what she was doing, her barely-skirted body undulating breaths away from Ray’s more excitable parts.

“So you’re in from out of town?” the girl asked.

Ray found he was unable to speak. Crow Horse, as usual, did not have that problem.

“We’re from out west,” he said. “It’s some pretty country you got out here. Much greener than back home.”

“Oh yeah?” she said. “You don’t look local. Are you, like, Mexican or something?”

Ray could feel himself begin to flush. The girl brushed against him just enough to tickle agonizingly, and her small hands circled his forearms for leverage. And the whole time, Crow Horse was watching him, presiding and delighting over the situation, and completely unabashed in his desire. Ray felt naked.

“Nah,” Crow Horse said. His tone was casual, unaffected by his predator’s gaze. “We’re Indian.”

The stripper’s candy pink manicure dug into Ray’s flesh. Crow Horse’s mouth curved into a wolf’s grin, and Ray shivered.

“The turban kind, or the bow and arrow kind?”

“Bow and arrow. We’re Lakota Sioux.”

The girl looked briefly back at Ray. He hurriedly lowered his eyes, but then he was staring at her ass, and that was worse. He looked up at the ceiling, instead.

“Both of you?” she said. “He doesn’t look it.”

Crow Horse finished his fourth beer, and laughed. “You never heard of white Indians? They’re rare, but it’s a good thing, cuz they’re the most dangerous.”

“I hearda Indians and white buffalo. It like that?”

“Absolutely.”

Crow Horse’s complete bastardization of Lakota folklore was enough to give Ray his tongue back.

“ _What the hell are you talking about?_ ” he asked in Lakota.

“ _Shut up. White people love this shit._ ” In English, he said, “Yeah, Ray’s a shapeshifter. Sometimes he’s a white buffalo. And sometimes, a little white weasel.”

The girl giggled, for a moment stopping her dancing and arching her back against Ray’s chest as laughter rocked her body.

Crow Horse grinned his wolf grin.

***

After the stripper was finished with her dance, Ray looked so shaken that he only had to ask once if they could leave before Crow Horse agreed. But upon reaching the street, Crow Horse walked away from their car, down the neon-lit sidewalks in the opposite direction.

“Wait,” Ray said. “Where are you going?”

Crow Horse did not answer. He kept walking, and began to whistle cheerfully.

Ray followed along, ignorant, because there was no alternative. His erection rubbed painfully against the unyielding denim of his jeans, worse and worse with each step.

“Crow Horse, really,” he said. “Tell me where we’re going.”

Crow Horse said nothing, just continued whistling, the note tinny and sharp against the music of the city. Maybe it would have played better off the canyons.

Finally, Crow Horse shepherded Ray into the seediest motel he’d stepped foot in while not on police business.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

Crow Horse ignored him. When the toothless man at the front desk informed him that they rented by the hour, Crow Horse paid for two. He took the key and began driving Ray down the hall before Ray could ask what, exactly, he expected him to do in this crack den for two hours.

“Crow Horse,” Ray said. “I’m serious. This isn’t funny.”

Crow Horse shut the door behind them, clicked the lock in place.

“You got five minutes to get undressed,” he said.

Ray went to argue again, but before he could form the words, Crow Horse smacked him on the ass, right where the curve of his cheek met his thigh.

There was pretty good sting to it, but Ray had enough experience to know it wouldn’t leave a mark. On more than one occasion, Crow Horse had left perfect purple handprints across Ray’s ass and thighs, like a Pat Hand on a painted warhorse. There had been painted ponies at Ray’s first powwow after moving to the rez, and Crow Horse had explained to him the significance of the different symbols. The Pat Hand meant that, after a dangerous battle, the horse had brought his rider safely home.

Ray never said anything about the bruises.

Ray began to undress. Crow Horse did, too, though his fingers were clumsier than Ray’s, and he lost his balance pulling off a boot, and fell against the wall.

“You’re drunk,” Ray said.

“Eyah. And you only got three minutes. Get movin’.”

Ray finished undressing with time to spare. He went to help Crow Horse, his steady hands moving through the confusion of Crow Horse’s and making quick work of buttons and zippers. Before the last of his clothing could hit the ground, Crow Horse was kissing Ray and driving him back to the small bed that was the room’s only furniture.

Crow Horse’s hands were much more competent on Ray’s body than they had been wrestling off his clothes, and Ray wondered if Walter had been faking, or if he was driven now by some more primal authority.

Crow Horse pushed Ray to his back, and as he brought his body over Ray’s, he pushed up his legs, pushed inside him. Ray stretched out the little bones of his spine, laying them out along the cheap mattress one by one. Throat bared, eyes on the ceiling, Ray wished for his muscles to relax. He felt like a drumhead, an animal skin scraped and tanned and stretched translucent tight.

It hurt more to start, but it was worth it to be able to look Crow Horse in the face, to be able to hold him and be held. Crow Horse’s arms around him; Crow Horse’s mouth pressing kisses to his chest, forming words meant to relax and comfort him.

“Easy,” Crow Horse said.

Crow Horse thrust into him, his body rocking over him, and back. Ray wrapped his arms around Crow Horse, settling his palms between Crow Horse’s shoulder blades, drinking up the throb of his pulse. They rocked together, the slow steady tempo of the tides coming in. The feel of Crow Horse inside him, the long stroke of the muscles of Crow Horse’s stomach rubbing against Ray’s erection as Crow Horse thrust in, drew back. Ray’s breaths grew short.

“You know,” Crow Horse said breathlessly, “you don’t have to worry about the noise, here.”

And Ray did not. He yelled as he came, a shout pent up from days of silence. It was cathartic and wonderful in and of itself.

Ray stretched the little bones of his spine against the springy resistance of the mattress, his breaths growing longer. His body was like a train stopping at depot, the pistons pulling slower and slower, the engines cooling, until all the steam and noise was just quiet and stillness.

Crow Horse went to draw out, but Ray put his hands around Crow Horse’s waist and held him in place.

“Wait,” he said. It was hard to find his voice. He felt as though he had been through a trial that had driven the need for speech from him, and regaining it was hard. “Please, just . . .”

Walter relaxed, his body settling against Ray’s. And then Walter kissed him: his lips, and then that spot just below the corner of Ray’s mouth that tickled so much he never thought he could stand it. And then his forehead, a benediction.

“ _Skúya_ ,” he murmured.

 _Sweet_. Ray felt something warm bloom inside him. Crow Horse had called him that once before—he’d been drunk then, too, but it didn’t matter. Ray thought of all the commendations he had received, the praise for his talent and hard work, and could not think of a single one of them he would rather hear than that one small word in Walter’s voice, rough with affection.

***

The shower was barely big enough for the both of them, but they managed to spend the rest of Crow Horse’s two hours in there, bodies pressed to the tile, bodies pressed to each other.

Ray was still hot from the shower, still slightly damp, his clothes sticking to his body’s valleys, his hair wet. His body was well worn and comfortable, like a soft old sofa. He stretched while Crow Horse dressed, enormously pleased with the sensation of being inside his body, of working his muscles and senses.

Crow Horse shepherded Ray out into the hallway, and turned to close the door behind them. As he turned back, Ray put his hands around him, pressed him into the doorframe. They were in public, a public far from the protection of the rez where _winktje_ were part of the whole and you were part of the nation and therefore not to be fucked with, but Ray was so full of emotion that he didn’t care. He pressed Crow Horse into the doorframe and kissed him, good and thoroughly kissed him, his hands resting about Crow Horse’s waist.

When they broke for air, Crow Horse blinked up at him, surprised. Ray was not one for public affection in general, much less in _Wasi’chu_ cities. He wasn’t stupid; he knew it was dangerous.

“Ray,” he said softly, and then brought his hand up to cup the line of Ray’s jaw, but not before checking the hallway to make sure they were alone.

“Thank you,” Ray said, and kissed him again. “I’ve really missed you.”

“Me too.”

Ray pressed him back into the little hollow of the doorway, and kissed him so hard Crow Horse thought they might need the room again.

“Come on,” Crow Horse said gently. “It’s gettin’ late.”

Ray nodded, and started out down the hall. Crow Horse followed along beside him. For a moment, he rested his hand against the spot where he’d smacked Ray earlier, tickling up a brief echo of the sting, the pain and the pleasure. Just a little reminder of where they’d been.  



	4. In Which Ray Wins Forty Dollars, and Crow Horse Has an Uncomfortable Conversation

  
Crow Horse, Ray, and Jimmy returned from a walk, dusk on their heels, to find Ray’s stepfather preparing to leave.

“What’s today?” Ray asked.

Crow Horse checked his watch as though it contained a calendar as well as the time, which, Ray knew, it did not.

“Saturday. Why?”

Ray didn’t answer.

“You should take the boys with you,” Ray’s mother said.

Ray and the Colonel responded at the same time.

“I don’t think—” the Colonel began.

“We wouldn’t want to impose,” Ray said.

“Where’s he going?” Crow Horse asked.

“To play poker with his friends from the service,” Ray’s mother said. “It’s a boy’s club, Harold; they’re boys; take them with you.”

“You don’t have to,” Ray said.

The Colonel looked at him for a long time. Then he shrugged.

“If you can be ready in five minutes, you can come,” he said, and went back down the hall to finish getting ready himself.

Ray’s mother smiled, and patted Ray’s arm. “It’ll be good for you boys to spend time together.”

Ray didn’t smile. His mother left the room and he looked at the floor until Crow Horse spoke.

“How long’s he been doing this?” Crow Horse asked.

Ray shrugged. “Always. Since before I was born.”

“You ever been before?”

“No. Sometimes they have it here, and when I got older he’d call me in to say hi to his friends—not to be friendly; for networking—but I’ve never been invited to play.”

“Maybe you’ll make the old man proud,” Crow Horse said. “You’re not a bad card player.”

Ray frowned. “Only by comparison. We’ve never played where you weren’t drinking.”

Realization dawned on Crow Horse’s face. “Oh, yeah.”

***

The game was at AIC Richards’ house, just outside the city. Ray and Crow Horse lagged behind the Colonel a bit on their way to the front door.

“What’s ‘AIC?’” Crow Horse whispered.

“Agent in Charge.”

“Is that a big deal?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s he in charge of?”

“A department. Me, my boss, my boss’s boss. My boss’s boss’s boss. That kind of thing.”

“If he was your AIC. He’s not, right?”

“Right. But he has known me since before I hit puberty, so there’s that.”

“He get you your job?” Crow Horse asked. “When you first started with the FBI?”

Ray froze. He had wondered that many times, himself. His stepfather had not been happy with his choice of careers even when he’d been on a solid track at the FBI—the Bureau was fine, but it wasn’t the army—but that didn’t mean the Colonel and his friends had not helped him.

“I don’t think so,” he said finally. “I’m sure knowing him didn’t hurt, though.”

A uniformed housekeeper showed them inside. The house was large and quiet, and decorated in a style Ray thought of as Old Money Chic. The floors were shining, honey-colored hardwood; the furniture was old and exquisitely cared for. The maid took them all the way through the house, to the den at the far end of the east wing, a room full of smoke and noise. Four older gentlemen were seated around a card table—not the kind with the foldout legs, but a real piece of furniture, topped with green felt.

“It’s about fucking time, Harry,” Richards said. Ray remembered him as imposing, but realized now that he was several inches taller than the man, who was growing gray and soft in his old age. “We thought we’d have to get drunk without you.”

AIC Richards’ eyes found Ray. “Look at you, boy.”

“Thanks for having me, sir.”

Richards shook Ray’s hand, but a little too hard, for a little too long.

“Like you fell off the earth when you went off the reservation, Levoi.”

Ray started to comment, then realized Richards was speaking figuratively. Out of the corner of his eye, Ray saw Crow Horse’s mouth tighten into a thin line.

“Yes, sir,” Ray said, into the absence of a safe answer.

A skinny man with thinning, white hair and an oxygen tank interrupted, insinuating himself between AIC Richards and Ray’s stepfather. Tom Wilde; he had been a security consultant until his emphysema had forced him to retire. He had lost perhaps fifty pounds since Ray had last seen him. A cigar, balanced atop a crystal ashtray, smoldered at his place at the table.

“This your boy, Harry?” The Colonel nodded and Tom smiled. “How are you, son? I haven’t seen you since before you had hair on your chest.”

“I was a freshman in college, actually,” Ray said, shaking the man’s hand. It was like holding a dead bird. “It’s nice to see you again, sir.”

Colonel Jack Parker was just as tall and imposing as Ray remembered. For a moment, the man’s dark eyes holding him in a steady gaze, Ray felt an urge to shrink back and become invisible, a skill he had mastered as a child. He shook it off, and shook the man’s hand.

“You grew up,” Jack said. “Congratulations.”

Ray’s brow rose. “On growing up?”

The ghost of a smile tugged at Jack’s mouth.

“No,” he said. “Andre Jackson. Good collar.”

Ray frowned. Jack was a career military man; there was no reason for him to know about that. Apparently, half the members retiring had not slowed the spread of information within the group.

“My partner actually made the arrest,” Ray said, and nodded to Crow Horse.

“Thought you just had the one kid, Harry.” Lieutenant Colonel Donald Stride. Ray remembered him as taller, too. He had always been dark-complexioned, but age and the sun had tanned and lined his face like an old mitt. Time had made him squat and wider, like the illustrations of Tweedledee and Tweedledum in Through the Looking-Glass. LT nodded to Crow Horse, and laughed.

The Colonel looked uncomfortable.

“This is an associate of Raymond’s from out west,” he said.

Crow Horse introduced himself, shook hands.

“Let’s get this shit started,” LT said. “I’m losing my buzz.”

“Don,” Jack said, “if you’re that anxious to give me your money, we can cut out the formality of the cards. I accept cash, checks, and most major credit cards.”

“I know you outrank me, Jack, but fuck you.”

They sat. Jack dealt the cards; LT dealt the drinks.

“Whattya have, Ray?”

Ray looked up briefly from arranging his hand. “I’m fine, thank you, sir.”

“What are ya,” LT said, “watching your figure?”

“Ray doesn’t drink,” Crow Horse said.

“That a religious thing?” LT asked. “Some kinda New Age shit you learned from the Injuns?”

“No,” Ray said.

“Lay off, LT,” Tom said.

“It’s different, these days,” Jack said. “A lot of the kids don’t drink; it doesn’t mean anything.”

“How ’bout you, chief?” LT asked. “You hold to all that?”

“Hell no,” Crow Horse said. “Gimme a beer.”

Ray had never been a good gambler, and he was too emotional to be good at cards. He folded most every hand. The men around him bluffed and gambled, drank and smoke, and talked shit, and for the most part Ray sat at the table and listened to their world go on around him.

Jack was endowed with enormous calm and a sober bearing; this and his quick, steady hands made him by far the best player. As predicted, LT lost heavily; he bet recklessly and drank too much. Ray’s stepfather was a conservative bettor with a decent poker face; this was just as Ray would have imagined. Tom was mostly engaged in the constant seesaw of smoking his cigar and dragging off his oxygen mask; he took the longest with his cards. Crow Horse drank and laughed and talked shit like he had been sitting in on these games for years. It was comforting, like having an inside man, a translator.

“Motherfucking fuck,” LT said, losing his fourth hand in a row to Jack.

“You better start playing better than you drink,” Richards said, “or Peg’s gonna have your balls.”

“I don’t let my wife near the finances,” LT muttered.

“We’ve heard that before,” Ray’s stepfather said.

LT sighed. “Forty years, going into battle, managing soldiers, and I can’t get the woman to stop spending money.”

“It’s an entirely different kind of warfare,” Jack said.

“How would you know?” Richards said. “You and Tom were smart and stayed out of it.”

Jack and Tom exchanged a look. It was brief, but Ray caught it. He recognized it; it was a look he received fairly often himself. He laughed before he could help himself.

Crow Horse looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “You all right there, _kola_?”

Ray bit his tongue.

“Yeah, absolutely,” he said.

“It’s your turn,” Walter added.

“Right. I’m out—” He laughed again. “I mean, I fold.”

“You got no poker face at all,” Crow Horse said. “I thought you used to work undercover.”

Ray tossed his hand, facedown, onto the table, and grinned.

“I think you just know me too well,” he said.

***

LT ran out of money, and Richards ran out of bourbon, so they decided to call it a night. Ray ended forty dollars up and strangely content.

“Hey, Dad. Thanks for inviting me.”

Ray’s stepfather regarded him silently for a moment, and then nodded.

Tom, his cigar, and his oxygen tank shuffled up to them.

“Harry, let me borrow your young man a minute,” he said. “Help me out with this, will you, son?”

Ray carried the oxygen tank to the driveway, and helped load it into the car. Tom supervised him; Jack wandered over to hover in the periphery once he had finished trying to dissuade LT from driving home.

Tom caught Jack’s peevish expression and said, “You two have been having that same damn argument for forty years. Time to give it up.”

Jack shook his head. “Never.”

Tom rolled his eyes, and turned his attention to Ray.

“You know you worried the hell outta your dad, up and leaving DC?” Tom asked.

“Yes, sir, I know,” Ray said.

“Liaison’s a nowhere career,” the old man continued. “You could be out in that damn desert the rest of your life.”

Ray smiled. “Yes, sir. I know.”

“It’s different out there, isn’t it?” Jack asked. “I know people at the Minneapolis field office; I’ve heard about you and your friend, and Harry sure as hell didn’t tell me.”

“It’s safer,” Ray said. “People know. Me and Walter got a place together. I guess that’s the nice thing about being in a dead end, nowhere job; who I sleep with isn’t going to get me fired.”

Ray studied the men for a long time. “Do they really not know? I mean, you’ve known each other for forty years.”

Jack and Tom exchanged looks.

“They know, son,” Tom said. “They just like to pretend something different.”

Ray opened his mouth, but Jack spoke over him.

“There’s no use getting worked up over it, kid. It won’t change anything. And it’s hard for most people to think about trading their life’s work for a little peace of mind.”

“I get that you have to keep it quiet for the army, for people on the street,” Ray said. “But they’re your friends.”

“And they’re doing a hard thing, every one of them, just in being our friends,” Tom said. “Asking them to think of this as normal is asking too much.”

Tom was using the car’s metal body to support himself. His hands were thin, the skin papery, translucent. Ray wondered how sick he was. How much time he had left.

“My father hadn’t spoken to me in three years,” he said. “And he only started up again because I got shot.”

“It’s a hard thing to accept,” Tom said.

The corner of Ray’s mouth curled, humorlessly. “I can’t think of anything that would make me not love him.”

“That’s the crux, boy,” Jack said. “He does love you. This wouldn’t hurt him so much if he didn’t.”

Ray shook his head, dropped his eyes. Jack rested his hand on Ray’s shoulder.

“I’ve kept an eye on your career. You were a good undercover agent, and you would have been good for that position in Richmond. Are you happy up there in the Badlands, rousting drunk and disorderlies and setting up speed traps?”

Crow Horse stepped out of the house, poked pointedly at his watch. He looked annoyed; God knew what kind of conversation the Colonel had been subjecting him to. This was going to be a fight for sure. Ray smiled.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m happy.”

***

“Goddammit, Ray. Your stepdad’s been asking me how I feel about Reagan.”

Ray kissed him. Crow Horse looked at him distrustfully.

“You know I’m pissed at you, right?”

“Yeah,” Ray said. “That’s okay. I’ll even sleep on the floor tonight, if you want.”

He kissed him again. This time, Crow Horse relaxed.

“Sometimes it’s hard to get a handle on you, Ray.”

“You’ll keep trying, though, right?”

Crow Horse chuckled. He rested his hand, for a brief moment, on the back of Ray’s neck.

“Yeah,” he said, as they walked back into the house to collect Ray’s stepfather. “Just cuz I know what a disaster it’d be, leaving you to your own.”  



	5. In Which Crow Horse Makes a Promise, and Ray Makes a Big Decision

  
“Oh, Raymond. I had this made for Walter; tell me what you think.”

Ray’s mother produced an enlarged copy of the photograph of four-year-old Ray and his father, the one where Ray was smiling.

Ray studied the picture.

“He’ll love it,” Ray said. “And I’ll never live it down. That’s what he’ll like best.”

Ray’s mother smiled. “Good.”

Ray handed the photograph back, but he could not shake the image from his mind.

“Why did you marry him? My father?” Ray asked. “He wasn’t anything like my stepfather.”

Ray’s mother sighed. She set the picture down on the counter. Her empty hands tensed before her body, anxious for purpose, like they missed the photograph.

“You’ve got that the wrong way round,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re thinking that your stepfather is my type, and your father was some aberration? A fluke?” Ray didn’t’ say anything, so she continued. “I loved your father very much, but he hurt us, Ray. So, when I got married again, I looked for a man who was unlike him. I didn’t want to get hurt again. I didn’t want _you_ to get hurt again.”

Ray’s chest was too heavy for speech.

“But he—he was, in many ways, a lovely man,” she continued, “and you got so many of his good qualities. You’re brave and thoughtful, kind. Impulsive, which was a bad trait for him, but you—”

“I’m not impulsive,” Ray said.

Ray’s mother arched an eyebrow. “You don’t think so? You never thought of men in that way before, and then you meet one, quit your job, and move halfway across the country. That’s not impulsive?”

“Well,” Ray said, smiling sheepishly. “When you put it like that.”

“It’s not a bad thing,” Ray’s mother said. “You follow your instincts. Your father was like that, too. I think the difference is that you have better instincts.”

Ray marinated in the sentiment for a long time.

“I wish you’d tell me about him,” he said.

His mother’s expression softened. “Okay. I can do that.”

***

Ray was pleasantly hypnotized by the rote act of folding laundry and the repetitive cadence of the dryer, and he was startled when the Colonel entered.

Ray could not remember ever seeing him in the room. He wasn’t sure he knew they had one.

Ray’s stepfather’s eyes lingered over the piles of laundry; over Ray’s hands, stilled for a moment, mid-action.

“You do the laundry?” the Colonel said finally.

Ray frowned, but lowered his head and resumed his chore, so it would be less obvious.

“Usually,” he said. “Crow Horse doesn’t do it right; he refuses to iron or sort anything. But he does the dishes, because he doesn’t like the way I put them away. It evens out.”

When Ray chanced a look at his stepfather, he found the man still staring at him, examining him like he was some exotic new species he was trying to classify. Ray sighed.

“Not everything means something,” he said. “Some things just—they are the way they are, and that’s it. There’s not a reason.”

The Colonel looked drawn. Ray bit his tongue.

“I’m sorry, sir, if I—”

“Raymond,” his stepfather said, and he sounded old, which was not a word Ray ever thought to apply to him. “You want the best for your children. It is difficult to see them make life harder for themselves. It is difficult to see them lose opportunities and take losses.”

“It would be nice,” Ray said slowly, “just for you to see me.”

The man’s gray eyes on him. Ray’s stepfather did not say a word, but he placed his hand, like an epaulet, on Ray’s shoulder.

***

Ray had never drank and he had never smoked, and the most drugged he had ever been was in college when he had to have surgery on his knee, and the doctors had put him under, way under. In the haze between anesthesia dreams and waking, he had thought he’d seen his father—his real father, calling him _wasi_ , and waiting for him in the doorway, framed by light.

He wondered, now, if that had been a vision, and then thought it was probably just a dream.

***

 _The way Ray’s mother was looking at Crow Horse was familiar. It was a standard from the Mom Handbook; Crow Horse’s own mother looked at him like that all the time, usually when he was trying to get away with something. The eyes themselves were familiar, as well; they were Ray’s eyes._

 _“Um, Mrs. Levoi,” he started, trying not to squirm._

 _“Cleary,” she said._

 _“Sorry?”_

 _“My last name is Cleary,” she said. “Levoi was my first husband’s name. Call me Maureen.”_

 _Crow Horse was beginning to wish he had taken the out when Ray had offered it._

 _“Yes, ma’am,” he said._

 _The way Maureen was looking at him changed. Now she was looking at him to size him up. This was a look he expected from FBI who wandered onto his block._

 _“You’re not really in keeping with Ray’s type,” she said finally._

 _Astonishment forced a little laugh from Crow Horse, more gasp than guffaw._

 _“I think he was pretty surprised, too,” he said._

 _Maureen smiled briefly, a flicker before her expression turned hard._

 _“He has a good job here,” Maureen said. “He’s on a solid career track.”_

 _Crow Horse realized, suddenly, that Ray’s mother had no idea what Ray’s Sioux blood meant, even in her own world. No way was the_ Wasi’chu _brass ever gonna promote some half-breed to be the new J. Edgar Hoover. Crow Horse let the woman talk, though._

 _“Are you the only reason he’s doing this?”_

 _The question caught Crow Horse off guard._

 _“I don’t think so,” he said carefully, after a moment of thought. “Bein’ on the rez stirred up some stuff about his Indian blood; I think he needs to put those things to bed.”_

 _She nodded in the measured way Ray had, a way that made Crow Horse feel like he was really being listened to._

 _“Okay,” she said._

 _She nodded again. Crow Horse could see the information working its way through the cogs and gears of her mind. He thought that was gonna be it, but then she animated like someone had just flipped her switch back to ‘on,’ her face lighting up and her hands fanning before her in an elegant gesture._

 _“He’s stubborn,” she said. “And he’s too proud to ask for help. You have to watch that.”_

 _“Uh—eyah. Sure. Yes, ma’am.”_

 _Maureen went to the telephone table in the hall. She wrote something on a slip of paper meant for taking messages, and handed it to Crow Horse._

 _“You call me if you need anything. I’m not—” She frowned, the same way Ray did when he was frustrated his mind was working faster than his mouth. “I’m here, if you need me. I’m here.”_

 _Crow Horse folded the phone number carefully, and put it in his pocket._

 _“Yes, ma’am,” he said._

 _She caught him off guard again, pulling him into a quick hug. She was as soft and light in his arms as if he’d just been hugging her cashmere sweater._

 _“Look after him,” she said. “I’m trusting you to look after him.”_

***

It was only an hour drive to Baltimore. The game was early, so Ray and Crow Horse left right after breakfast.

“This is gonna be their year,” Ray said.

“You say that every year.”

“It should be true every year.”

Crow Horse started the game with a hot dog and two beers. The beers lasted through the fourth inning; Crow Horse’s bladder lasted through the sixth.

Ray needed to stretch his legs and to stop getting so mad at the umpire, so he tagged along, hanging around outside the bathroom, and then outside the concession area once Crow Horse decided he needed a snack.

Ray was waiting for Crow Horse to get through the concession line when he was approached by a small boy, maybe eight or nine, dressed from head to toe in Orioles insignia.

“You have a gun,” the little boy pointed out.

It was hidden beneath his jacket, but yes, he was wearing his sidearm. Ray touched the smooth leather of the holster briefly, reaffirming its presence. He wondered how the kid had seen it. Good eyes.

“Yeah,” Ray said. “But it’s okay. I’m a police officer.”

Ray showed the boy his badge.

The kid grinned up at him. “Cool.”

Ray looked around the crowded concourse for a worried parent, and came up empty.

“Are you lost?” he said. “Where’s your mom and dad?”

The kid shrugged.

“Did you come here with someone? Your parents?”

“Yeah.”

“But you don’t know where they are?”

“No. Can I hold your gun?”

Ray scanned the crowd. “No.”

He handed the kid his badge, instead. The boy was impressed enough to become completely enamored, forgetting the gun.

Walter and his popcorn wandered up.

“Hey,” he said. “You babysitting or something? We don’t need the extra money that bad.”

“He got separated from his parents,” Ray said. “Can you—”

“Yup. Stay right here.”

Crow Horse and his snack left in search of stadium security.

“Who was that?” the kid asked.

Ray knelt so he was at eye level with the boy. “That’s my partner. He’s a police officer, too.”

“Cool.” The kid looked up from studying Ray’s badge. “Have you ever shot anybody?”

“Yes, once.”

“Cool! How come you shot him?”

“He was going to hurt someone, and when I asked him to stop, he didn’t.”

“That’s awesome,” the kid said.

“It really wasn’t,” Ray said. “I don’t like shooting people.”

“Why not? It looks so cool.”

“Have you ever been shot?”

The kid wrinkled his nose. “No.”

“I have. And it’s not fun. It hurts.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “You got shot? Really?”

“Really.”

“Did you cry?”

Ray smiled. “No.”

“Did you almost die?”

“No. My partner was there; he made sure I didn’t die. That’s his job.”

“Cool.”

Crow Horse’s boots; a pair of patent leather, standard issue patrol shoes; two pairs of sneakers, lady’s nine and men’s eleven. Ray stood.

The lady’s nine sneaker took the boy into a hug.

“Oh my God, Nathan, we were so worried.” She looked at Ray, apologetically. “He just wanders off.”

“He let me hold his badge,” Nathan reported.

The men’s eleven handed Ray his badge back. “Sorry for the inconvenience, officer.”

“It’s no problem.”

“I have told you a thousand times to stay where we can see you!” the lady’s nine said as they walked away.

“He shot somebody!” Nathan answered.

Crow Horse squeezed Ray’s arm.

“You all right there, _kola_? You look a little . . .”

“You’re really good with kids,” Ray said.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Crow Horse said.

“I’m fine, Walter.”

“All right, then. You wanna catch the end of the game, or what?”

***

 _“You ever been under before, son?”_

 _Ray’s mother’s grip on his hand tightened to the point of pain._

 _“He hasn’t,” she said. “It’s a hundred percent safe?”_

 _“Mom, it’s okay.”_

 _Ray squeezed her hand, and she relaxed a little._

 _“It’s just like going to sleep,” the doctor said, and it was._

 _It was not just like waking, however. Ray opened his eyes and found the world spinning, too bright. It was like the Tilt-a-Whirl, except on the carnival ride you had some kind of nexus, a context that connected you to the ride and to the earth. This was just sensation—dizzying, exhilarating, terrifying. Ray blinked, like he could refocus the world to make sense, shuttering like a camera. Finally, he realized that he was staring at the ceiling, the bare fluorescent bulbs; he dropped his eyes. Immediately, indistinct forms; it hurt too much to focus. Long vision was better. In the doorway, a figure. Ray let his eyes relax, and finally he could see something clearly. His father, in a suit, like Ray had never seen him until the day they buried him. He felt Ray’s eyes on him, and straightened, shifting the stark black and white lines of his suit so they were straight up and down._

 _“Hey,_ wasi _.”_

 _“Hey,” Ray said._

 _“No use fighting it,” he said. “Some things, you just gotta ride out. Try and fight ’em, and they’ll buck you off.”_

 _“You came,” Ray said._

 _“Yeah,” Ray’s father said. “I’m always here.”_

Ray woke with his shoulder throbbing like it hadn’t in days. He grimaced and turned himself onto his back. It was his own fault; he’d been sleeping on it stupid. You could always count on yourself to make things harder than they needed to be.

Crow Horse was snoring quietly. Ray tried to find the most comfortable position for his shoulder without making too much of a ruckus. His eyes roamed drowsily around his childhood bedroom. Throughout his life, Ray’s mother had collected his awards and accolades and hung them on the wall. Apparently, she had never stopped. Beside little league trophies and field day ribbons, Ray saw his mother had pinned up sharp shooting medals from Quantico, and news clippings—Ray talking to Maggie’s media contacts. Ray had been seven when his father died, and his mother had not remarried until he was eleven. His mother had been a single parent for four years—longer, if you counted the last years of his father’s life, when alcohol had made the man absent or catatonic. Ray’s mother had picked him up from school, and helped him with his homework, and cooked him dinner. She had mended his clothes and helped him with girls, and talked him down when he grew three inches ahead of his classmates. And she had done it all alone.

Ray was pretty sure he couldn’t do any of that by himself. And he didn’t want to. But he wasn’t by himself. Ray looked at Crow Horse’s sleep slack face, listened to the quiet sounds of his breathing.

 _“My partner was there; he made sure I didn’t die. That’s his job.”_

Ray had been taking pains to not make a fuss, and then he ruined it all by shaking Crow Horse awake.

“What’s’a matter?”

“You said we could talk,” Ray said.

Crow Horse blinked druggedly. “In the morning. I said we’d talk in the morning. Also, not to press the point, but that’s been a couple days.”

Ray sighed. “Fine. We can wait—”

Crow Horse sat up. “Nah, not now that you’ve gone through all the trouble of waking me up. What’s on your mind, Ray?”

“I think we should do that surrogate thing.”

Crow Horse looked at him, concerned and annoyed, like Ray had just escaped from some kind of mental hospital and he would have to be the one to round him up and take him back.

“What the hell are you talkin’ about?”

“Kids,” Ray said. “I think you’d be a good father, and I’m starting to think I might not be terrible at it, too.”

Crow Horse’s face softened.

“Big step,” he said. “Forever step.”

“Yeah, I know. But I’m ready.”

“It’s gonna be even harder than this,” he said.

“I know,” Ray said. “That’s okay. It’ll be worth it.”  



End file.
